Pirate Scum
by Insomniac By Choice
Summary: Galactic Federation Penal Code Sec. 46.08. DEFINITIONS. In this chapter: 1. "Pirate" means one who redistributes commercial resources without authorization. a. A person commits this offense if, while a vessel is involved in interstellar commerce a pirate attempts to interfere with its authorized progress to a destination. b. An offense under this section is penalized by death.
1. Chapter 1

**Sarkasus Orbital Platform**

To some pilots, the act of docking is a not-so-subtle metaphor for intercourse. The inexperienced pull in slowly, nervously, dangerously unsure of what exactly to do or whether they'll be able to do it, despite whatever simulated practice they might have previously had.

If not for some assistance, many such pilots would likely reach their destination too quickly or not all, ruining the event for both parties, indeed. The experienced, meanwhile, can do what is expected of them, guiding their vessels to the proper opening without doubt or error, a necessary skill in the modern age. The prevalence and potential harm caused by the modern hyper-viruses make computer link-up a precarious risk no matter how many or how secure the firewalls are, a risk most platforms prefer to avoid by using living pilots and manual guidance.

So if docking is intercourse, the esteemed lady Sarkasus Orbital Platform is a whore on a far grander scale than even the great breast-laden fertility goddesses of antiquity could have hoped to match or their worshippers dared envision. Thousands of ships bearing markings of every kind pull in and out of her grace daily, exchanging their goods with seemingly reckless abandon before going on their way again. She is used out of necessity, but both benefit from the relationship, if only in a small way. Strangers come and go, and the esteemed lady pays them no mind, only requesting that they be gentle while they do their business and deposit the required commission of Yire into her modest on-site account, the dresser top of our own enlightened era, if you will.

It is within a whore, dear fellows, that this simple author begins his humble tale, a setting more appropriate than one might immediately realize. It was quite a sight, actually. Several dozen ships of varying sizes and diverse cargo were in the process of loading and unloading, and a few doing both simultaneously. Hundreds of workers and machines scrambled to and fro, moving items from here to there in a highly structured chaos. The din was tremendous and overpowered most any voice that tried to speak, but not all one can know can be learned from listening.

At a far corner of our esteemed whore, there was a particular Human standing near a particular ship. That he was particular matters only to you and I, for you see, this particular Human was not particular in any way. I would be remiss, I think, if I did not make this point clear. His political views non-existent, his morals situational, and his beliefs in the nature of the universe secondary to more practical, tangible matters that he actually dealt with in day to day life. His appearance was bland among his own kind—neither handsome or terribly ugly, neither overweight or athletic—and his occupation was given that same forgetful respect granted to so many other professions considered honorable but not remarkably worthy of attention.

Jack Gwinn, our particular Human, was a pilot, nothing more, nothing less. He was a cog in the machine of interstellar trade whose function was to ferry goods from one place to another, usually from his home stationary platform to orbital platforms, the middlemen of trade, which would then distribute the products to nearby terrestrial sites. When he'd been younger, Jack had been willing to be an independent contractor, getting far better pay per shipment but leaving himself at the mercy of irregular work in the process. After his marriage, he had become a full-time employee of a chemical refinement company. While he himself could easily survive on flavorless Yemen Insta-Noodles for months at a time, he was determined he would not force his wife to do the same.

Jack was a Human, terribly average among his own kind, but on an orbital platform full of terrestrials, he was an exceptional novelty. As the terrestrial Humans passed by Jack, they wrinkled their noses and made unflattering remarks he chose to ignore while he signed over responsibility of the shipment from his company to Sarkasus Platform. He wouldn't let himself become upset at typical terrestrial bigotry. After all, what else could one expect from ignorant brown-necks? Most of them didn't know any better, anyway.

The terrestrials hated Jack simply because he was a "Platformer." Like all of his kind, Jack's pallid pink skin, light blond hair, and pale blue eyes disgusted the backwards, colonial brown-necks who associated those features with a number of unrelated physical, social, and moral defects.

Jack had spent enough time around colonists that their own leathery brown skin and repulsive dark or olive pigment didn't make his stomach knot as it once had, but that didn't mean he enjoyed looking at them. The appearances of other species, no matter how dissimilar from his own anatomy, didn't bother Jack in the slightest, but there was something intensely revolting about seeing his own race so horribly twisted like that. How they could live getting basked in radiation and pelted with dirt all day—moreover how they could prefer it—baffled him. For terrestrials, working on orbital platforms was being "in space" and most of them only did it for the Yire to send back home. For Jack, being within the selfish bounds of a natural gravity felt awkward and he was anxious to be away from it to get back into the apathetic arms of deep space once again. He was, after all, just an average man.

"You're done here, right?" the brown-neck supervisor asked Jack as the last barrels of the shipment finished unloading, his booming voice hardly discernible above the rest of the noise.

"Yeah," Jack answered with a shout." I'm done."

"Then get your pale white ass outta' here and go back to your own platform," the man ordered coarsely. "We need room for more ships and besides, I wouldn't want you to get that pretty backside a' yours burned from the radiation, what with bein' within a couple hundred million kilometers of natural light and all."

Jack thought of a retort to the laughing supervisor far too late; the man had already begun to move away and couldn't hear him. As he turned and headed for his ship to go back home, Jack sighed and gave a silent praise. He had a long trip a head of him but he was glad to finally be rid of the whore.


	2. Chapter 2

**Seventeen Standards Days Later  
Mitsumi Stationary Platform**

By the time Jack could see his home platform with his own eyes, he could already feel its presence in the marrow of his bones. He was a child of space, from of a line of Platformers going back as far as there were records for such things. His platform wasn't just a place where he could live; it was a part of him. The empty nothingness of the cosmos granted him the freedom he craved, but Mitsumi Platform held a mother's tender love and he could hardly wait to get back to it.

More than this, it held a better kind of love, one he _couldn't_ wait to get back to. Angela. His wife gave him many things space's freedom and Mitsumi's mothering love could not, and despite the long amount of time he was away, he considered himself a very lucky man for the time he was able to spend with her. She wasn't really an attractive a woman by any objective measure, but then Jack was anything but objective when it came to his wife. By his standards Angela was gorgeous, and even if she hadn't been, there were more important things. She kept him sane. He'd been single and living on his own for almost seven years before he'd met her. Coupled with his occupation, it had been like a seven-year sentence of solitary confinement. She was his parole from himself, and that was worth more than any physical beauty she might lack.

His thoughts distracted by all of these things, amazingly he still managed to dock the ship into its storage space almost perfectly. A beneficial side effect of monotony, he supposed. As he finished processing his ship into Mitsumi's databank, he opened the hatch and jumped on to the ground level, almost unable to contain his anticipation. When he got back to their home he'd take Angela and—

But first things first. There were important financial matters to take care of, after all. The industrial section of Mitsumi was on the way to his home and the platform was still experiencing its latter light hours which meant that if he wanted, he could run by and see his boss to get his paycheck and still have plenty of time with Angela when he got home.

On the other hand, he wasn't expected to get in until tomorrow so he could always get the money then. Yes, that would be the best course of action. So Jack stuck his hands in his pockets and began what he knew to be a very long walk. There were faster, more expensive modes of travel than his own two legs, but he couldn't afford to spend money on something he could do himself. Things were too tight for that.

The industrial area of Mitsumi was conveniently placed just outside of the docks and Jack was soon on the main road, making his way back to where he lived, placed—often _in_conveniently—just outside of the industrial area. The racket made during the day was something to which Angela had become accustomed, so much that she tuned it out completely unless it was brought to her attention. Jack, though, was away so much that it drove him crazy when he was home. But now as Jack walked past some of the mammoth structures that lined the main road, he noticed something odd. Whereas six or seven years ago every building within 10 blocks would have still been shaking and clanging away generating or refining a product, and even last month over half had been working, now—save one—all were quiet and still. Likewise, instead of an endless stream of trucks transporting materials to and from the docks, there were just a few on the road that would whiz by him every few minutes. Maybe it was a holiday he didn't know about or because of the latest recession they'd started cutting the workday shorter instead of cutting jobs, but then it couldn't have gotten _that_ bad yet, could it? It hadn't been that long ago that Mitsumi had been in an upswing and factories had been running all the time with double the staff for day and night shifts. Since almost all the factories and refineries on the platform were in the market of chemicals, it was the nature of the economy to go up and down, from boom to bust. This was all nothing new. Eventually Mitsumi would bounce back and everything would be OK again, just like always. It just seemed like recently the busts were coming more often and staying around longer than they ever had before. Maybe some day the bust would just stay.

Jack passed out of the industrial sector still pondering this until he realized that he was just a couple of blocks away from his neighborhood. He walked the rest of the way home nervously looking up and scanning the streets any time he heard footsteps approaching. Even though he was a poor target for thieves, both literally and figuratively, there was no assurance that he wouldn't be attacked anyway, even as light as it still was. The gangs and pickpockets could make far more elsewhere targeting the rich than they could going after men like Jack, but the authorities had long ago given up on trying to prosecute crimes that happened between the poor because, they reasoned, it would be a waste of their own already stretched funds. They couldn't afford to actively stop anything that wasn't a priority crime and if it happened all of the time, it wasn't a priority crime. So that line of thinking went, at least. Thus, no one would try to do anything to stop the thieves, except the victims themselves.

Many a time Jack had watched the victimized men and women fight for their lives and the lives of their families as the money they needed to survive until the next paycheck was wrested from their grasps, never to be seen again. Many a time Jack had watched those men and women actually end up giving their own lives for this money, and every time Jack had kept his eyes to the ground and continued walking. He had a wife of his own and there was nothing he could do against four or five armed criminals. So his thinking went, at least.

Times were tough for everyone and tight on his income anyway, but paying off a loan didn't make it any easier. By re-evaluating their budget and cutting back on any unnecessary expenses that they might still have, he and Angela would probably be able to make it out the other side of the economic slowdown OK, but if he got paid any less, less often, or they needed anything more, he didn't know what they would do.

Probably get kicked out of their apartment, for a start. It was rundown, filled with leaks that wouldn't stop and stains that wouldn't go away, but Angela kept things tidy and in working order as much as she could manage. She had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia when she was in her early teens and it prevented her from holding down a steady job, even when she wasn't feeling the symptoms of intense pain and fatigue. There was no pattern to her attacks and no way to predict how she would feel from one day to the next. She'd been blacklisted, deemed not worth the resources of training someone who would take off weeks at a time out of the blue. The corporations were in the business of being in business; they wanted to make money, not waste it on charity cases. So she was a homemaker, a rarity on Mitsumi, mainly because most households needed all available hands working just to pay the costs of living. A pilot's income was more than most and could have supported just him well enough, but with an unemployable spouse that also had needs, they were always right on the edge of going broke. Without the bank loans, they already would have.

But Jack had known all that going into the marriage and accepted it with no regrets. She did her best. When she wasn't taking care of the constant troubles their worthless home gave her or dealing with her condition, she tried to further her writing career by working on novels, magazine articles, reviews, scripts—anything she thought had a chance of getting bought. Whenever she got depressed about not being able to do her share, Jack reminded her that one day someone would be smart enough to realize her talent then everything would just fine. He'd quit his job and more than make up for any debt she might have to him now by lounging around in their huge mansion on the other side of Mitsumi, doing absolutely nothing and sponging off of her career until the day he died. That cheered her up somewhat but neither of them gave much hope to it, even now when they needed to the most. They simply couldn't afford to.

The two of them lived in a large building that had been around since the earliest days of the platform. Then it had been meant for the wealthy and for a long time it served that purpose and served it well. Once the building had sufficiently aged without proper renovations from its owner, however, all of the well-off residents had relocated to newer, better locations, leaving the building all but abandoned. A savvy businessman had bought it from its previous owner for almost nothing and started making modifications. Modifications, mind you, not repairs or improvements. Each floor had had only four apartments in it when the businessman had started. Now, there were 32. In addition to the shoddy walls that had been set up throughout the floors almost haphazardly, the plumbing and electricity were in a constant state of disrepair. Most families had to share the same working bathroom with several other households and of these many shared their own apartment with another family or unrelated resident to make rent. That wasn't an option for Jack and Angela because their home was smaller than most, possessing only three rooms, and one of those was a closet. So the place basically had a bathroom and an all-purpose area, the former which contained only a toilet (the building's fifth floor was devoted entirely to public showers), and the latter which contained a kitchenette with a sink, a bed that also served as a couch during the day, and a desk with any hardware they happened to own—old, slow, and generally worthless but functional. Of course the quality of the homes was what made it so cheap and no one living there could afford any better. So it worked out just great for everyone.

Jack eventually reached his building and went inside, utilizing the makeshift staircase that had been built after the automated lifts had ceased working. A network of steps and ladders created a functional way to move between floors but it was tough on him and absolute murder on Angela. He wished they could live somewhere decent but then he wished a lot of things that would probably never happen.

Once on his floor, Jack had to walk sideways through the narrow pipe chase between rooms that served as a hallway, then use his key to unlock the door to the apartment that lay on the exterior of his. Some homes, such as his own, were completely surrounded on all sides by other apartments and no passageways, however makeshift, ran alongside it to provide a direct entrance. One had to be on very good terms with his neighbors because in addition to the thin walls that didn't lend themselves well to keeping secrets, one also had to interact with his fellow tenants constantly. For example, he couldn't even get to where he lived without seeing his neighbors and using one of their spare keys. By the same token, for the past several months his neighbors couldn't use the toilet without seeing him (or more likely his wife). Politely apologizing to the Drucker and Metsi families for interrupting their dinner, Jack walked over to his own door and unlocked it. He found Angela typing away in the all-purpose room and saw the buckets catching the various drips were still at a low level, meaning they'd been dumped out several times throughout the day. Good, today was one of her better ones.

"Jack, honey!" Angela exclaimed, finally noticing him standing there. "You're back!"

She quickly stood up, ran over to him, and kissed him passionately on the lips, pressing her own mouth on his and holding it there without any signs of letting up. After half a minute of this, he pushed her back gently and began to laugh.

"You know this is what I come home for, but keep that up and you're going to suffocate me!" He laughed. "What's with all of the excitement, anyway? I'm glad to see you too but you haven't acted like this since we were newlyweds."

"Well, something wonderful happened while you were away," she said, a grin creeping up on her face. Jack watched it and suddenly an enormous smile crossed his own as he realized the possibilities.

"Oh my God, you got published!" he nearly shouted, "This is wonderful! Coming home I was worried about money problems but now…"

His words trailed off as he saw the grin on his wife's face slowly disappear, replaced with an expression that looked as if she was about to break into tears. Realizing that he'd guessed wrong and how that mistake had ruined his wife's good mood, Jack sought to console her as best he could.

"I'm sorry, baby," he said, hugging her closely to him and rocking her slowly, "I didn't mean to upset you or ruin what you were about to tell me. I just believe in your talent so much that that was the first thing that popped into my head. Forgive me, baby. I'm just a stupid pilot; I don't know any better." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her smile reappear faintly. "I'm sure whatever you have to tell me will be even better."

She titled her head slightly and whispered two simple words into his ear. Their implication, while clear, was anything but simple.

"I'm pregnant."

He pushed Angela back from him -more roughly than he'd intended- and responded with several simple words of his own.

"You're— you're what?"

"I'm pregnant," she repeated much slower and more clearly.

At this, Jack let go of her and sat down on the floor, hard. The people in the room beneath began to curse at him, but he couldn't hear them. All he could hear were those two words, over and over again.

_I'm pregnant._

_I'm pregnant._

_I'm pregnant._

Eventually, his wife's concerned face entered his field of vision and helped him to stand back up. Her mouth moved but he couldn't hear what she was saying. All he could hear were those two bloody words and with them the implied synonyms. _Medical bills. Mouth to feed. Short on rent. Eviction. Destitution._

"How— how did you let this happen?" he blurted. She didn't respond but she didn't have to. "Oh damn it. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that, Angela, I really didn't," Jack said, "It's just— it's just that I thought we'd agreed to get financially secure before we tried with the whole baby thing and… and we aren't there yet. I mean, we aren't even close."

"I know that but we'll find a way to make this work. We should have been more careful, but that doesn't mean this is a mistake or that we have to treat it like one. We'd been waiting to have a baby until the right time and if we're having it now, then it must be. This is a blessing and if we can figure out a few places to cut back spending here and there, we'll be just fine."

Jack sighed and shook his head.

"No, Angela, we won't. When the economy slows down like this, the company doesn't have much need for me and it doesn't look like things are going to pick up. For a while at least. We were probably going to have to cut back anyway just to support ourselves, but a baby, Angela? A baby? Even if by some _miracle_ we manage to keep this place through the entire pregnancy there's no way you could eat enough to be in any condition to deliver it. It would be stillborn and you probably wouldn't survive either. Beyond that, we just can't support another human being in here with so many other needs already."

"Well, Jack, we're going to have to. I can try to get a job again until I get too far in my pregnancy—"

"No, honey, you can't. No one will hire you _now_; you know that. What makes you think they'll hire you when you take a physical and they find out you're pregnant? I love you—you know that I do—and I'll love our child when it's born, but we don't have that kind of money and more importantly you can't risk yourself like this. I don't want to lose you and even if the baby survived—which it probably wouldn't—what kind of life would it have? I'd still be a pilot and it would be alone most of the time, in poverty all of the time. We can't bring a child into this world when we're so ill-prepared to take care of it."

"You say we can't but we're going to have to. There's nothing else we can do."

"Well," Jack mumbled, "there is _one_ thing."

"Don't you even say it. Don't you dare or I swear to God—"

"Wait just a second, wait just second. Calm down, OK? With the costs of delivering a baby being what they are these days and us still working to pay off one loan, we may not even be accepted to a hospital. I'm telling you right now, I can't make that happen. I have no control over it. With some sacrifices and a little luck we may just be able to scrape together the money for a budget operation, the earlier in the pregnancy the better." She stared at him and he looked away. "Look, I'm just trying to say we don't have any really good choices here. We shouldn't discard a very viable option so easily. The earlier we take care of it, the better. I mean, it doesn't even have functional organs yet. Right?"

She exhaled sharply and turned her back on him, fists clenched angrily. Bewildered, he approached her and put his hand on her shoulder softly trying to placate her, but when he did she jerked away and shook him off.

"Get out."

"What?"

"I said, 'get out.' If you can't make this work, I'll find someone who can."

Jack entreated her once again to just calm down so they could discuss the matter reasonably, but she was inconsolable. Before he could think of anything else to do or say, he heard a knock at their door.

"Jack, Angela?" a masculine voice asked.

"Yes," they both answered simultaneously, the tension of the room evident in their voices.

"Did I come at a bad time?" the person asked, one of the Druckers by his lack of an accent. The question was innocent, voiced in an innocent tone, but both Jack and Angela realized how loud they'd gotten. Everyone on their floor knew it was a bad time to come; of course the people just outside their apartment did.

"Not at all," Angela responded in spite of this as she turned back around and smiled, the attempted cheer in her voice and facial expression quite unconvincing, "Jack was just about to go out for a bit, as a matter of fact, weren't you Jack?"

"Yeah, I was just leaving," he muttered. He wouldn't bother to put on a show. Not for these people.

"OK, good," the Drucker said opening the door. It was one of their teenage boys, ("Jonathan," Jack thought the boy's name was) meaning he'd had been sent by his elders to disrupt the argument before it got out of hand. Still, the kid managed to put on a pretty good act. "Mam, I don't know what it was but my stomach feels like it's about to fucking explode, pardon my language. Can I use your toilet, Mrs. Gwinn?"

"Sure Jon, go on in," she said.

"Thank you, Mrs. Gwinn."

"You're welcome, Jon."

The Drucker boy walked quickly to the toilet and shut the bathroom door behind him. The boy didn't shut the door to his own home and as Jack stood in between the two rooms for a moment watching his wife, he felt the eyes of the Metsis and Druckers on his back watching to see what he would do. He had to do something to fix this before he left, but it was too late. Angela crossed her arms and began to tap her foot impatiently. Jack sighed and slumped his shoulders in surrender.

"Bye, honey," Jack said. "I love you."

She didn't say anything, and he left, certain in all the universe there was no man more wretched than he.


	3. Chapter 3

As Jack started walking away from the apartment building, he glanced up at the dome ceiling then down at his watch. There were still about 15 minutes of light left before all of the factories and businesses on the platform were sure to close down. If he hurried—and his boss hadn't shut the offices down yet—he might be able to get his pay for the Sarkasus run and have something to give Angela so he could actually sleep in his own home tonight. He thought about it for a moment then broke into a run that quickly turned into a jog that quickly turned into a brisk walk that quickly turned into a death march. His lungs were in awful shape, though he didn't know why. One of these days he was going to have to start exercising regularly, he supposed.

Soon enough, though, he found himself in front of the business he worked for, the Acidic Chemicals Delivery Company. The building was large, looming a dozen stories above the base level of the platform in some parts and sprawled over three standard blocks. Dark clouds rose up out of the smokestacks in the back, smelling foul to those foreign to the platform, but familiar and comforting to Jack. That smell meant ACDC was still in business and he still had a job. Besides, other than the odor, experts said there was nothing harmful about the side products as there might have been in the technological dark ages of the past. Jack didn't understand the process or exactly what any of the chemicals did, but he never had concerned himself with anything except doing his job. He was a pilot, not a chemist. It was his job to take things from one place to another; the whys and whats beyond that just got in the way.

Jack walked up to the entrance of the office area and used his clearance card to unlock the large doors while tiny spore cameras studied his every move. They looked like a swarm of gnats, and were just as annoying, but their ability to fully capture every angle was apparently superior to mere single lens technology. It was certainly more expensive. He had no idea why the company bothered with so much security. It wasn't as if just anyone could handle or sell the chemicals ACDC produced, or even that there was anything valuable to make the costs worth it. Jack hoped the boss would think about cutting back on stuff like that before cutting back on pay or jobs. As he went inside, there was a burly Human in his mid-50s sitting at a desk. Jack knew the man to be Mr. Wallace's personal security guard and if he was there, so was his boss. Jack greeted the man with a wave.

"Hey, Jack," the guard returned amiably. "You're back a little early, aren't you? Wasn't expecting you back until tomorrow, I don't think."

"Yeah, well, you know how those brown-necks get around us," Jack answered. "Puts them in a hurry so they can get us on our way again, if you know what I mean."

"That I do, that I do," the guard gave a hearty chuckle. "Of course I imagine you weren't dragging your feet to stay around them, either. But you're here to see the boss, right?"

"Yeah, figured I'd pick up my pay before I went home tonight," Jack said.

"He's in his office upstairs, as usual. I'll tell him you're coming up. A word of advice though, Jack," the guard warned. "He's counting his money right about now and things are tight. I know, I know, what else is new, right? Look, there's a recession going on all over Mitsumi, but here it's starting to get pretty bad, worse than he's letting on. Production keeps going up but it's just a front because there's nobody buying. So if he shorts you anything, ignore it and be happy with what you've got. Hell, thank him for it. That's what I did. I'm pretty sure he's looking for any excuse to cut jobs. Don't get on his bad side and keep your nose firmly planted up his backside until things start getting better, alright?"

"Alright, Orson. By the time I leave I'll be able to tell you what ol' Wallace had for breakfast this morning. Or at least what it smells like."

Jack smiled at the brawny guard, who was still laughing quite loudly at the meager joke, then headed up stairs warily toward his boss's office. His smile disappeared as he realized where he was going. Jack's employer wasn't the type of man whose appearance inherently instilled fear. Just the opposite. Mr. Wallace was short, unathletic, and unable to accept the fact that his hair was leaving him as quickly as his youth while his waist was advancing outward with the inevitability of age. Some of the younger employees found it hard not to laugh at Mr. Wallace as they towered over him and saw the few tiny strands of hair trying to bridge the great, white, fat expanse of his forehead. These often found themselves working somewhere else.

Jack didn't have the problem of resisting laughter, due in some part, perhaps, because his own hairline was retreating far more quickly than it had any right to and he realized that given a few more years, he would probably look no different than his boss. But even if this was not so, Jack would never have cracked a smile around Mr. Wallace about that, or any other subject. Mr. Wallace was notoriously bad-tempered and was known to fire even longtime employees on the slightest whim. He and Jack had always been in good relations, probably thanks to the fact that Jack tried to limit their relationship as much as possible. Mr. Wallace knew him by name and knew Jack did his job without causing problems. Jack wisely realized that anything beyond that was unnecessary and dangerous.

He knocked and stepped into Mr. Wallace's office, a place much smaller and cramped than need be. Mr. Wallace was not a very organized man in the conventional sense, and if not for the central intelligence unit keeping track of all of his files, he might not have been capable of running a business at all. Even with computer assistance, his methods often made locating what he wanted a very tricky affair. Mr. Wallace was sitting at his desk, searching through the cluttered heap of papers in front of him, communicating with someone else via the audio system. As Jack came into the room, he stood where he was, trying not to distract or upset his boss anymore than he might have already. Jack knew the conversation was winding down when Mr. Wallace began to turn red and shout at the person(s) on the other end in a language that included more profanity than actual words.

"Off!" the man growled to finally end whatever discussion he'd been having. His body was regaining its normal pasty color and Jack could only pray that his employer's mood wouldn't affect their situation. Mr. Wallace glanced up Jack and smiled in a way that wasn't at all comforting. "Hello, Mr. Gwinn. It appears you've caught me in the middle of a little business disagreement. But that's no concern of yours. Sit down, sit down." Jack did. "Now, that's odd. I don't remember us having an appointment. What exactly is it you wanted to talk to me about, again?"

"Well sir, I finished my delivery a little earlier than scheduled and I was just wondering if I could pick up my payment now instead of tomorrow morning. If not that's fine, too," Jack added quickly.

Mr. Wallace folded his arms across his large, flabby chest, grunted, and frowned. The man ran his fingers through what was left of his hair, an unconscious gesture which left the strands standing several centimeters straight in the air. Jack did everything in his power to maintain eye contact. He didn't know his boss well enough to tell whether this was a good sign or a bad one, but he did know to not even hint that he'd noticed it.

"I suppose I could pay you," Mr. Wallace mused, finally, "but I'm going to have to dock you. Not only are you asking for an advance, but I can't be paying you for hours you didn't actually work."

Jack's initial impulse was to protest at the obvious idiocy of docking him for time he'd _saved_ the company, but he remembered what Orson the security guard had said downstairs and bit his tongue before he could say anything stupid. He took a deep breath and tried to approach the matter as diplomatically as possible.

"How much exactly are you going to dock me, sir?" Jack asked pleasantly.

"Well I obviously can't let this become a habit for you, but I'm not a cruel man," Mr. Wallace said as his grin returned to his face. "Do it again and you're fired. This time, though, I think half is about right."

"Sir?"

"What, something the matter with your ears, Mr. Gwinn? I deducted half of your pay for the time you didn't work. Perhaps you think I'm unfair and you'd like to look elsewhere for a fairer place of employment?"

"Mr. Wallace, thank you for paying me, thank you very much. I guarantee it will never happen again, but—"

"But what, Mr. Gwinn?"

"Sir, don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for your leniency but right now we just can't live on any less."

"We?"

"My wife, sir."

"Oh yes, that's right. You're married, aren't you? So what's the problem? You have no excuse if you can't survive on two incomes in this day and age. Just wasteful."

"She can't work because of a condition she has, sir, so all of our income comes from you through me. I know times are hard on everyone, sir, but we've got bills to pay off, a loan we're still working on, and the cost of living being what it is, it's—it's just real hard on us. If you want to reduce my pay now, OK, I won't complain, but please sir, do you have any other jobs you need done so that I can make it back?"

"People have been asking me for money for a very long time and I've come to recognize certain things. You sound too desperate for this to be about just you and your wife. Your eyes are too clear to be a sand-chewer, I think, but there are certainly other addictions. Have a gambling problem, do you, Mr. Gwinn?"

"No sir, I'm afraid it's worse."

"Worse?"

"At least with gambling you've got a chance to win some money. With a pregnant wife, you can't do anything but lose."

"Ha ha, perhaps you're right, Mr. Gwinn, perhaps you're right. But the truth of the matter is that I don't need my pilots to pull double shifts. I have more of you people than I know what to do with and soon I'll have more of you than I can pay," Wallace said as he finally handed Jack's pay over in the form of a Fisk, already set to exactly half of what Jack should have gotten for the job, "You're just going to have to make due. Now go home, tend to your wife, and leave me alone. It's been a long day and I'm tired."

"Please, sir. A janitor, odd jobs, whatever. I'll take anything."

"I've no more patience for you, Mr. Gwinn, and I'll have no place for you if you continue to complain. Get out. I won't tell you again."

"Sir, without more money, my wife and baby aren't going to make it. I'm begging you."

"What did I just tell you? Hmm? What did I just tell you? " Mr. Wallace threw up his hands in disgust, "That's it; you're done. Take your money, get out of here, and don't come back again. As of this moment, you're no longer and employee of mine, understand?"

Jack just sat where he was, as his boss's words rolled through his head again and again and he attempted to determine their meaning. He heard the words but they just didn't make sense. They couldn't mean that. His wife was going to have a baby and instead of being short on money, they were going to have no money at all. No, it hadn't actually happened. He hadn't just been fired. In fact, his wife wasn't pregnant. He was going to wake up next to his wife or on his ship and remark aloud what a strangely vivid dream it was he'd just had. He closed his eyes to try just that.

"Don't just sit there," he heard Mr. Wallace say in front of him, ruining his last hope, "You're not employed here and I haven't invited you; that means you're trespassing on private property. A fine like that dropped on a man like you might as well be a life sentence. You'll be working it off until your last breath."

"You've killed us," Jack mumbled numbly, unable to come to grips with what had just happened. "You greedy, heartless bastard, you've killed us."

"Oh you'll get by. Here's some advice that's worth far more than your deduction and maybe even your unemployment: if your wife can't earn her keep by standard means, let her earn some of it from her back. That should get you through until about month seven and after that I'm sure there are some men you could find with the proper fetish who'd be willing to pay top Yire to 'wake the baby'."

Before Mr. Wallace had even finished, Jack shot up out of his chair and lunged, determined to squeeze the life out of his former boss. But Mr. Wallace was indeed able to finish because as Jack lunged, he felt a strong hand grip him by the shoulder and pull him back down. He turned his head to see who had a hold of him, but before he could, another hand grabbed him by the neck and slammed his head down onto the desk. Something in his face cracked painfully but for the moment he couldn't identify it. He struggled briefly, but his right arm was being twisted in such a way that the slightest movement caused excruciating pain in his arm and shoulder. He surrendered quickly.

"Consider yourself lucky I'm not a cruel man, Mr. Gwinn," Mr. Wallace went on above him, so close he was almost licking Jack's ear eardrum. "Because of your wife's condition, I won't turn you over to the nearest colony on charges of assault. But if by chance she takes my advice, be sure to contact me so I can break her into the business. Gently. A thousand Yire is a good offer, don't you think?"

He thrashed again but a particularly forceful twist put an end to that and he cried out in spite of his best attempts to stay silent. A moment later he was jerked to his feet, arm still held in a position that rendered him helpless, as he was taken out the door. Once in the hallway, Jack heard an apologetic whisper in his ear from his assailant.

"I'm sorry, but this is my job, and I need it," Orson apologized.

"Fuck you," Jack cursed as the guard escorted him down the stairs, "You take your paychecks from a fucking bastard and you're worse than he is for accepting them."

"And for how many years you did the same? Don't try and take the high ground with me. If it was me getting canned instead, you'd sit on your ass and pretend to ignore me, and you know it. I tried to warn you. I did what I could, but you're not the only one who has to worry about money, alright?"

Jack had nothing to say in response and was quiet the rest of the way. Orson finally let go of Jack's arm once it was clear he wouldn't try anything. Jack tried to lift his arm but then just let it fall limp at his side. With his other hand, he checked his face and found his nose bleeding, running down his chin and onto his shirt. A dull headache was quickly developing into a kind of war zone, the unknown armies apparently doing their best to destroy all brain matter inside his skull. He was a wreck and a pauper. Eventually his body would heal, but time would only make him poorer. Damn it.

The two of them reached door together and Orson opened it for Jack, who walked out slowly, making sure not to bump his shoulder. As he descended the steps, probably for the last time, behind him he heard Orson say one thing more.

"I'm sorry about this, Jack, I really am, but stuff happens to everybody. I'm sure this will all work out for the best."

Jack stopped and turned back around to face the guard. Perhaps Orson expected him to respond but Jack could think of nothing fitting to say. Instead he raised the hand of his good arm, extended his middle finger, and turned to begin his walk toward home.


	4. Chapter 4

Jack Gwinn walked the rest of the way absentmindedly with the Fisk he'd been paid well hidden within his clothing. Traveling in dark hours was far more dangerous than doing so in light, a fact probably true as long as Human—or any other—civilization had been around. On platforms the day/night cycle was simulated to go along with the human circadian rhythm, 12 dark hours and 12 night hours, each gradually blending into the other to simulate sunrise and sunset. Some races found this system uncomfortable but Jack was not of one of those races and liked it just fine.

The dome lights were completely off now and in theory people were to use localized lights to see their paths but vandalism and the forces of time had ruined most of them. The platform only sent replacement lights when residents of the area complained loudly enough for long enough, which wasn't often. People had more important concerns than seeing where they were going, such as who they would run into while they went there. At night and especially during economic recessions, the gangs drifted out of their neighborhoods and into the rest of the platform. Jack, though, was able to proceed unmolested, even as he heard the sounds of others on the streets who weren't so fortunate. From an alleyway he heard a woman screaming for help and as he passed by he could see several men, partly obscured by shadows, gathered over the woman on the ground, still crying out, as they began to undress. He paused mid-step but quickly turned his gaze back to his feet and continued on. He had a wife with a baby on the way to think about, after all.

A father. Jesus, he was going to be a father. He could hardly be considered a good husband, how could he hope to make a good father? His own father had worked 70 hours a week in a plant and come home dead tired almost every day, but Jack's father had been a good man and an even better dad. It was as if certain people were born with a "good parenting" gene. Jack, unfortunately, lacked all of his father's patience, kindness and wisdom. His knowledge of children was abysmal and ability to tolerate them even worse. He had thought he could at least be a provider and leave the parenting to his much more qualified wife but now he couldn't even do that. He was a failure in every sense now.

Jack was taken out of his thoughts as he realized there was someone standing in his way at the end of the block, though with the light out down there he couldn't see very well. He stopped and squinted. The figure was smoking long, bent garette and had a set of horns that curled around its bald head. A Vidian, maybe? It'd have to be of the Western breed by its bulk, but it was just standing there, doing nothing. Odd. He looked back behind him and saw an East Vidian pass under a rare working light. It was coming his way with its breed's signature shamble, always an impressive sight simply due to the vast range of motion that occurred. The jerking arms, swiveling hips, and drooping shoulders were humorous to see anyway, but on the frame of race over two meters in height and rail-thin, it was difficult not to laugh out loud. All Vidians were quite tall, but the Western variety were a bit more solid than their Eastern cousins and therefore didn't suffer from this defect, making them the more widespread breed. Locally, though, East Vidians were just as common. But neither breed was allowed to live over here, so what were they doing?

Before he could look back at the West Vidian, Jack received a knee to the crotch and fell onto the ground clutching himself. The West Vidian pulled a knife down close to his throat and told him to be quiet. The next moment the East Vidian was over him, shining a light into his face.

"Shit!" he heard the Eastern say. "A real idiot, you are."

"What?" the Western replied, the blade still pressed tight against Jack's Adam's apple.

"At his face, look," the Eastern said flicking Jack's injured nose, causing his eyes to immediately fill with tears. "Do that, did you?"

"No, of course. Human to me, he looks like. No problem. To the balls I gave one, just fine he went down."

"That I know. But didn't bust his face open, you say? Think you who did?" the East Vidian stood up and began to walk away, shaking its head. "Already somebody took this one. No worth, has he."

"Not my fault, so tough to see now. Besides, there was who else?" the Western started patting Jack down, its hand even passing over where he had hidden the Fisk, but it didn't linger. "Oh, something I'm sure he's got."

"Somewhere else, let us go," the Eastern said as it ignored the other and went around the corner. "Maybe find us some one with something of worth, eh? Now come. No reason for you to waste your knife with him."

The West Vidian grunted to show its disagreement but stood up and left without doing Jack any further harm. Jack lay where he was on the ground for some time, recovering from the re-injury of his nose and the blow to his crotch, still throbbing quite painfully, as well as the realization that he'd been a Vidian's whim away from death.

He gingerly pulled himself to his feet and resumed his walk, dragging his miserable body forward for reasons he couldn't identify. This time he was aware of the thieves around him but now it was apparent to them that he was not a viable target. If he looked half as bad as he felt, he looked like he'd been beaten half to death. But that might be able to help him once he got home. If he played his cards right he might be able to get some sympathy out of this from Angela, if not today then tomorrow when the bruising really set in. Then he'd be on her good side and they could just forget about the baby for a while. In fact, he might be able to use this as an excuse for why he only had half of his money… or even why he had no money. Yes, that was right. He had gone to Mr. Wallace to get his pay for his last job but on his way back he had been assaulted and robbed. But not to worry. From the conversation he'd had with Mr. Wallace, he was sure his boss would help them out until the baby came, even though they would probably have to accept a reduction in pay after that. That was what he'd tell Angela and that would buy him some time to figure out a real solution.

Yes, Mitsumi held a mother's love.

**Ten Days Later**

The Unemployment Coordination Office was meant to be a centralized location where businessmen could send in requests for workers with a specific skill, and those workers who were unemployed could come down to the UCO and check out needs on the platform. In times of boom and normalcy, it worked quite well and jobs were rarely unfilled for more than a day. Interested applicants could send over their record and if accepted, they would receive information of their new job and be there the next day.

But these were definitely not days of boom. Normalcy itself had become a sand-chewer's dream by now. Instead of a few people dropping by throughout the day, there were hundreds -sometimes thousands- crowded around the office expectantly, hoping their occupation would be called out over the loud speaker and they would be able to go back to work. And Jack was among them. He was hardly the only person who needed a new job and more were joining him all the time.

He'd been fired for over a week. Normally, he would have spent almost all of this time with Angela but again, normalcy was an abstract historical concept. He told her he had to go out to work for Mr. Wallace, odd jobs and such, in order to make a little extra money. As proof of his hard work, he'd present her with what had ended up being his severance pay, a little bit at a time. Then they would sit down to eat whatever item was cheapest at the store that day and he would tell her that he had already grabbed something down at ACDC, part of a larger, more intricate tale to give them something to talk about during the meal. He hadn't eaten in four days but he could scarcely complain when Angela had to eat for two people. She'd actually lost a little weight, which was especially scary because as far as he knew, she'd been keeping everything down. It was just that there wasn't much to keep down.

He tried to get a job every day so he could change that but despite all his work, he'd gotten nothing to show for it. He stood outside the UCO all day hoping they'd call for pilots, but they never did. For that matter, they rarely called for anyone. People were losing jobs left and right, but no one else was needed to work. Gossip and paranoia went hand-in-hand to worsen an already severe crisis. While the rumor that Mitsumi authorities were planning a mass deportation to lower the official population in order to be able to meet the quarterly-per-capita-tax levied by the GalFed government had received little credence a week ago, every day saw a few more conversions. Now the rumor went that it was mass genocide that would be used in the place of deportation because it was cheaper. Jack was lucky he only had to submit himself to such talk during the day. A lot of people were around it all the time. They'd begun to live in the lot surrounding the UCO, or alleys within walking distance because they had no place better to stay and didn't want to miss a late night announcement, should one ever come. Jack might have had pity for them had they not been glimpses into his own future.

He got such glimpses each day, or at least the backs of their heads, and just from that he could tell how desperate the person's situation was. If they looked around a lot they were new, still getting used to the mass of people and their daily ritual, which they were sure would end any time now. If they stared at the building, they were regulars, imagining that their occupation had just been called out and today they would go back to work, but no longer truly expecting it to happen. And if they just looked at their feet, they were long-timers, the first of those laid off in the recession who understood new jobs would not be coming for them and did not bother to imagine what things would be like if they did. Doing this was Jack's way to pass the time until he had to come back home and lie about the events of his day, although doing nothing but standing around all day gave him plenty of opportunity to perfect his lies. It became easier each time but not automatic. He didn't think it would ever feel right to lie to her. He cared, and that was why he was going through all of this trouble.

However by the 10th day, he cared somewhat less than usual. He awoke late, starting his day off with a lie by informing his troubled wife that Mr. Wallace had instructed him not to come in until after lunch. So after sleeping well into the mid-light hours, Jack had finally gotten up and headed down to the Unemployment Coordination Office, knowing full well that he would be on the outer edge of the crowd and in no position to reach the doors should the remote possibility occur that the occupation of pilot was actually called out. And when he arrived and stood in the crowd, nothing was different about the situation except his location and his state of mind. Hours passed without incident and he began to think about sleeping in _every_ day.

But when it did so happen that that remote possibility occurred and the word "pilots" echoed throughout the crowd with dramatic power, Jack was immediately filled with a sense of intense surprise and disappointment. He rationalized that it was unlikely he would have been able to make it through the crowd even if he had shown up at the usual time, however he couldn't help but also think that he'd let Angela down by not arriving earlier. While it was possible that another firm would get increased demand and hire a few more workers, it was a miracle that even these had been chosen. He was envious of those he saw in front of him, feverishly pushing themselves toward the UCO, because even though he knew that only a couple would be able to feel the joy of having a job once again and the rest would be crushed by an unbearable misery when they were rejected, for now, all had genuine and inspired hope, and Jack would kill to feel that again.

A few hours later as the lights went off at the UCO and armed guards escorted the staff through the crowd, Jack sighed and turned to walk back home, the crowd generally dispersing with him. He felt guilty at this most recent failure but it was a private one. It would have been much worse had he had to share it with his wife and once again he realized how quickly his relationship to Angela had become a farce. He hadn't bothered to work on a lie but they came so smoothly and effortlessly now he was sure by the time he got there he'd have something worked out.

He'd quickly learned that thieves didn't even bother with people leaving the UCO since it was almost inconceivable any of them would be carrying any amount of money. On the other hand, home break-ins had become more common proving that even criminals were not immune to economic woes, and just like the crowd at the UCO, more were joining the ranks all the time. Jack's reminder of his own brush with death was fading quickly and it had turned out that his nose hadn't actually been broken meaning the soreness would probably be gone in a few more days.

Why hadn't he woken up sooner? He could have shoved himself to the front of the crowd if he'd just been a little closer. He had good enough credentials to be at the front of the class, his firing notwithstanding. He could have gone home to Angela hours ago, explained that he'd been lying for the past few days and the reasons for it, and told her of his new job. Instead, he was just going to hand her a worthless token and pretend not to notice the look of disappointment she tried to hide behind genuine appreciation.

"Pilots!"

Jack heard the word again in his mind, a cruel accusation and unneeded torment. He could rebuke himself well enough without his mind playing tricks on him. But then he stopped and realized that he had not thought it to himself, but heard it with his ears. He turned to locate the source but was forced to wait until it was repeated to find it.

"Any fucking pilots around here!" he heard someone again say up at the next corner. Even though he could see no one else acknowledging the call, Jack began to run to make sure no one would get the opportunity. As he got closer, Jack noticed that the person was a Muore, and drew up short. Muores were well known to be a race of criminal degenerates and it wasn't a good idea to get involved with them unless one wanted trouble. But it was too late. The Muore had heard him approach and turned, a row of yellow teeth the only thing separating one half of its pale blue face from the other. Even the eyes were the same shade of blue, making eye-contact difficult and—even overlooking their social deficiencies—the Muores uncomfortable conversationalists. Jack's only advantage was that he was somewhat taller, but his size didn't seem to intimidate the Muore at all.

"You're a pilot, yeah?" it asked.

"Uh, yeah. I was."

"Good, good. I was hoping I'd be able to get one of you today. Would have thrown the whole thing out of whack otherwise. Now follow me and I'll let you talk to the boss to figure out your cut."

The Muore began to walk away but Jack just stood where he was.

"Wait. A cut of what?"

"That's the other thing you'll talk about. I just kind of assumed being in the state you're in, money was the most important topic on your mind."

"I haven't agreed to talk about anything yet. Who are you exactly and what do you need pilots for?"

"We need a pilot to fly something somewhere, what else? As for me, I'm the guy who's going to take you to the guy who's going to make a poor guy like you into a rich guy like me."

"What?"

"Just shut up and follow me. Relax. It's not like you've got anything worth taking or that we'd want to steal from you, anyway. You're a Yuey, otherwise you wouldn't be leaving the UCO right now."

Jack thought for a moment but his desperation outweighed his misgivings; he had no real choice. He nodded and the Muore smiled again and began to walk. It took them a very long time to get to their destination, made even longer by the lack of conversation. It seemed they were walking completely across the platform. Eventually they arrived at a bar and by luck or something else, no one had given them any trouble on their journey, odd considering the reputation of this part of Mitsumi. Jack had never been here before as this section of the platform was unofficially reserved for the unproductive races, those that didn't have too many working members and the few who were usually had an occupation somewhat less than legal. In fact, the only time Jack had seen most of them was walking to and from work and then he was doing his best to go unnoticed. But the Muore didn't slow down and Jack followed it inside, hit by a thick cloud of smoke as he did. He coughed, but pushed forward anyway.

Entering the bar, Jack felt a sense of panic. His brief survey of the occupants led him to the conclusion that even more so than the regular occupants walking the streets, none of them would give a second thought to slitting his throat and tossing him out the back. Jack couldn't see another Human anywhere. He started to turn around and head back out when he saw the Muore wave at him from a table. Damn. Jack walked to the table and sat down at the behest of the Muore, still far too cheerful than it had any right to be.

"It may be a few minutes before everybody gets here," it informed him. "Go ahead and order a— what is it you people drink? A beer or something?"

"I don't have any money."

"Oh yes, that's right. Well, don't worry, I'll take care of it. Be right back."

The Muore went off to the bartender and ordered something while Jack sat where he was, wincing every time someone passed by. What had he been thinking coming in here? Stupid, stupid Jack. He looked at the Muore, still at the bar, and calculated his chances. He still had time to get out of there.

As he stood up to sneak away, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"The pilot, you are?"

He looked up at the source of the voice, dreading what he'd see. As Jack had feared, a West Vidian toward over him, curled horns pointed threateningly in his direction and smoking a bent garette. Jack immediately had flashbacks of a dark street and knife at his throat. He gulped.

"Eh?" the Vidian asked after several moments without a response, "For special people is this table reserved. So if pilot you're not, you are who?"

Jack gulped and tried to form an answer but the words got tangled up in his tongue and for the life of him, he couldn't unravel them. The Vidian's black eyes stared at him with annoyance now, annoyance that was swiftly becoming anger. Luckily for Jack, the Muore returned to rescue him.

"Yeah, this is the new pilot," it said to the Vidian as it sat the drinks down on the table. "Beliel, meet, well actually, what _is_ your name, Mr. Pilot?"

"Jack. My name is Jack."

"Well there you go. And Jack, this is Beliel, another business acquaintance of ours."

The West Vidian nodded and sat down in one of the chairs as if that was all the introduction it required. The Muore followed a moment later. Jack was left standing awkwardly, and—as he realized his opportunity had passed—sat back down himself. He picked up the glass and took a drink. It was beer. He was surprised a bar in this part of Mitsumi would actually carry it. It was better than most of what he'd had at the Human establishments, too; this one didn't taste like its main ingredients were piss and dirt. But then this probably wasn't the cheapest drink this bar carried, either. He snorted. Yeah, he had to come way out here and have criminals treat him just to drink a decent beer. How sad.

After a bit of idle talk between the Muore and the West Vidian, another person sat down at the last chair around table, a Zephan. The other two stopped talking and turned toward the Zephan in an act of obvious deference. The Zephan had an air of humble confidence about it and even though physically it was roughly Human in terms of height and build, it didn't seem worried about anyone else around it. The Zephan smiled at Jack and stuck out a hand across the table.

"I don't think I know you. I take it you're my new pilot."

"I'm a pilot," Jack said noncommittally as he shook the Zephan's six-fingered hand. He sensed that it would be a mistake to even hesitate with this one.

"What's your name?" it asked.

"Jack."

"Well my name is Stehl, Jack. And in case these two have absolutely no manners, the big guy to my right is Beliel, and the little twit to my left that picked you up is Karris. There's a few more, of course, but none of them are going to be here today and these guys here are all you really need to know. Glad to have you aboard."

"Aboard what?"

"You mean none of these guys have told you?" Stehl the Zephan asked in disbelief.

"No, they haven't. The little— Karris said you would tell me."

"I need a pilot."

"I understand that, but what do you need a pilot for?" Jack asked, attempting to temper his frustration as much as he could.

"That's a question you might be more comfortable leaving unanswered," Stehl advised in a low tone. "But the answers to the much more important questions you haven't asked is that a.) you'll be working again, b.) all you'll be doing is taking a ship to a place it needs to be, and c.) you'll be paid well, more than you were making before you lost you're job, I'm sure."

"All the same, I'd like to know what I'm going to be getting myself in to. What exactly do you do?"

"We're… unauthorized redistributors."

"You mean you're space pirates."

"No. I don't mean we're 'space pirates.' That's a loaded term propagated by GalFeds to turn public opinion against our noble occupation. We may fit the literal definition, sure, but if you call what we do piracy, most all businesses today are also pirates. They steal from the people all the time, they just do it in a way that's Federally condoned. If we had the money to lobby the GalFeds, there's no doubt what we do would be legal as well. Modern corporations can charge whatever they want in their market because markets are opening up faster than businesses can expand. We just redistribute the products in the market at a competitive price and help out the consumers."

"I don't know much about economics, but the Federal government says you're pirates. And if you get caught in the act, they execute you on sight like pirates."

"True enough. But you know what else is true about pirates?" Stehl waited to see if Jack would answer and when he didn't, the Zephan smiled, "They get filthy fucking rich, that's what. Depending on the shipment, we can each make a year's wages of a guy like you in just one job. The overhead is a ship and some assorted equipment. Everything else is pure profit. And the pilot gets a double share because he's the most important part of the outfit. We can't get out there and redistribute if we don't have someone to take us out there, right?"

"Yeah, I guess. I'm sorry. This is all moving a little fast for me."

"I understand. You're unsure; this is all new to you. But the bottom line is that we need to head out tomorrow morning and we have nobody to take us. We can probably find someone else but you're here now and it's obvious you need the money. I'll tell you what. What was the last thing you got paid?"

"Twenty-five."

Stehl reached into his pocket and tossed Jack a jumble of worn Fisks.

"Well here's a 10-fer. It's not much but it should help cover rent or whatever bills you still have to pay. I'm not trying to commit you to anything long term. Consider this a well-paying test run. Show up tomorrow at the A-side civilian docks to depart and in a few weeks when we get back you'll have 10 times what you've got there. See how you like this and take some time to think about it. After that, we'll just play it by ear."

"And if I don't show up?"

"Come on, Jack. I don't know you real well but I imagine you're a bit smarter than that. I'm generous to my employees, but my generosity stops there. You catch my understanding, I'm sure."

"Yeah," Jack said, his mouth suddenly very dry. "I do."

"Good, then it's all settled. If you've got some family, go tell them you got a new job and you'll be gone for about twenty days. We should get back before that, but some times things happen. Always best to err on the side of caution. Nice meeting you Jack," Stehl said as he stood up. Beliel and Karris nodded and followed suit, Karris grinning broadly in Jack's direction.

Jack stayed where he was, soaking in the new parameters of his increasingly miserable existence. How in the devil had this happened? Somehow he'd gotten involved with pirates and received a death threat in the space of a few seconds without even realizing that it had happened or how. He looked down at the ten thousand in his hand. Money from illicit sources was still better than no money at all. Besides, he already had his lie for Angela ready-made. Mr. Wallace had a shipment ready to go and Jack would be the pilot. Easy. Yeah, easy.

He sighed and got up. As he did, he noticed all of the eyes watching him. He'd been given a sizeable amount of money in front of a lot of people who needed more. As he edged his way to the exit, Jack made up his mind that tonight, utilizing a mechanized form of transportation could be allowed. He'd earned that at least.

**Twenty-five days later**

Jack looked at the Fisk and couldn't believe it. In his daze, he even expressed it aloud.

"Well, believe it," Stehl said. "And believe me, that's chump change compared to what you'll be getting going forward. For the rest of us, the return was a disappointment. But next time, we'll let the good times roll, for sure."

Jack nodded and let his eyes flit up to the Zephan's gleaming yellow face. There was a smile on it broad enough for the second row of teeth to be plainly visible. Jack force a smile back, but it dropped shortly, and Stehl laughed.

"Enjoy that. We're going to lay low for a while, but next time we need to do some work, we'll come at you first," Stehl said.

The other pirates (and Jack found that phrase easier and easier to think) gave him a respectful nod as they walked away until at last Karris passed by and gave Jack a hug.

"If I were you," the Muore whispered in his ear, "I wouldn't move around too much or try to make yourself hard to find." Karris pulled back and made a smooching noise. "You did great, darling."


	5. Chapter 5

The days and weeks after the first job were good ones, the best, perhaps, Jack could remember since going out on his own and having memories solid instead of misty-good with youthful nostalgia.

He found himself thinking harder on times past when he hadn't before. Like what his father must have been like when he was roughly Jack's age, trying to provide for the still womb-filling Jack. Surely the elder Gwinn would have done anything for his son, anything to provide for the family. Anything – but not piracy, Jack heard something in him whisper.

So Jack was careful with his money, careful how he spent it, careful how much he let Angela know he actually had because she couldn't be allowed to know how it was he'd gotten it.

He found the deception necessary and if necessary then unavoidable, and if unavoidable he sought to make it as easy as possible to maintain. So his _life_ became a deception, a strange mirror world where he allocated as much time as he could to living a certain way in reality so that the mirror world of his deception lined up most easily.

Thus, in his fantasy life, Jack was still employed. The economy was poor, so he didn't have any flights for a while and did other jobs around the warehouse instead, coming home at the end of each day at a normal hour. There was nothing exciting that ever happened but occasionally one of his coworkers had a funny story or anecdote for him to relate to Angela.

In reality, Jack spent most of his time wandering the non-Human Ghetar, at places he never would have dared go before but now suddenly, strangely, belonged. He kept little money on him out of caution and spent next to nothing, but he wasn't hassled and no one shook him down. He wasn't a mark anymore; he was a _pilot_.

He still went to the Unemployment Coordination Office occasionally in the hopes that he might be able to get something legitimate again, but he didn't try very hard. He managed to actually land a contract once, but when he went to the unofficial pirate headquarters to ask Stehl's permission to actually go through with it, the boss had been the quiet sort of livid that made Jack worry he wouldn't survive the encounter at all. It just so happened there was an errand Jack was supposed to run in the time he'd be gone for the new, legitimate job, and this conflict had weighty repercussions indeed.

In the end, Jack ended up going through with the legitimate job because Stehl ultimately decided that if anything happened down the road, it would look too suspicious for Jack not to show up for the work offered to him, and that outweighed the inconvenience of finding someone else to ferry whatever it was Stehl had wanted moved to wherever it needed to go.

Stehl had said the first job was nothing more than a one-off if Jack so wished, but if Jack had been stupid or naïve enough to believe it then, he didn't now.

Eventually he stopped going through the motions of looking for work altogether.

Twice a week he went to Stehl's table at the bar and checked to see if the next big job was coming, or if there was anything else that needed a pilot coming up. When there wasn't, he thanked whoever manned the table for the free drink and spent the rest of the day at the library, his ultimate destination the rest of the week, as well. The handful of jobs he was asked to do were short and "semi-legitimate." On those jobs, Jack was assured, but did not believe, that he was protected from any accusations of wrongdoing, and his role in laundering stolen goods was supposedly impossible to prove so long as he denied everything when caught and questioned.

In fact, Jack never had to do anything out of the ordinary on his hauls; he flew, and signed off his cargo, then returned to Mitsumi with more, supposedly fully legitimate goods. Jack's taken-for-granted Humanity was a wonder to the rest of the group, and Stehl congratulated him in person once as he handed over the credits.

"Good work, Jacky-boy. Good stuff," Stehl said with slap on the back. "You're just golden, through and through."

"I'm glad to be of help," Jack said receiving it, more earnestly than he'd intended. "I just wish we didn't have to hurt people to do it."

"We don't hurt people; corporations do. We make the rich less rich and the poor less poor," Stehl said. "And if we make a bit of a profit facilitating, hey, we got to feed our families, don't we?"

Jack didn't want or try to argue, for numerous reasons.

And why should he? The first raid that got him into all this mess had gone exactly as promised. Jack flew to intercept a merchant vessel; when close enough, the pirate ship disabled the other, the pirates boarded and took what they wanted, and Jack flew away. The pirates even left behind a time-delayed distress beacon in a main Federation lane, sending rescuers to the stranded target. The Integrated Media Network confirmed weeks later there had been no fatalities from the efficient raid.

He wondered why he hadn't been a pirate all along.

One day months later while sitting in the platform public library, listening to classic audio book of a long dead civilization, someone pulled Jack out of a historical fiction on the second great and bountiful Human empire with a tap on his shoulder.

He took out his earbuds and looked over his shoulder into a monochrome face.

"Hello love," Karris said. "Let's stretch our legs a bit, don't you think?"

He left with the Muore, the terror he'd be killed radiating through him like a low-level isotope. There wasn't a very large chance Jack would be shot in the back of the head or injected with some especially nasty nanonmachines inside of a library, but the chances increased everywhere he followed Karris, into every shallow alley where Karris said, "Turn here a second, would you?"

But as Jack actually followed Karris it was the middle of the bright times and when the space pirate finally said, "Hey, turn here would you?" it was toward the main platform square, not into an alley.

A large crowd had gathered and Jack could hardly see more than a few meters before the crush of mass ruined his scope, but on a raised, temporary structure he saw five Federation citizens whose species he recognized, shackled but kneeling, and what looked like a speckled green mantisoid standing in a fluid-filled cylinder pod next to them. At either end of the prisoner line stood two blue-painted exoskeletons twice a Human's height and a half again, cradling rifles in their elbows and wearing helmets that turned their faces into black mirrors.

A wiry Elacino in a finely tailored suit walked to the front of the makeshift stage, his voice wired into the square's sound system around them all. Behind the raised area, a screen focused on the Elacino stretched his scaly red-orange face to the size of a small building.

"And _this_ Zebesian coward was captured on the colony world of Kalon Zuj Vengi Ve after slaughtering every inhabitant that hadn't already died in the bombardment," the speaker continued, pointing at the mantisoid. "What do you think we should do with him?"

Jack didn't hear anyone around him in the crowd say a word, but the speakers of the square screamed, "Dissolve it!" "Kill it!" "Turn it into stew!"

The Elacino's forehead frills stood up in aroused excitement. "Yes! Yes! As goes the Zebesian, so too Zebes - soon."

Jack looked for a moment at Karris, but the Muore didn't say anything. Like everyone else in the crowd, his eyes were trained on the cylinder, which had started to bubble. Jack turned his concentration likewise.

The mantisoid had seemed almost in a coma before, but as the bubbles began to fill the pod, its limbs sprang to action. The pincers, wrapped shut, strained against their bands, and the left arm's claw actually came free, but to no end. In slow motion the free and bound claws and feet swung against the container, sending audible smacks throughout the platform center and its silent crowd.

But bubbles continued increasing, and the mantisoid's beak finally locked open in apparent agony before all limbs went limp and another minute of bubbling concluded in motionless silence.

Jack took a moment to study the others on stage, but those bound had made no attempt to watch the Zebesian die, and blank stares continued, as if unaware of all else.

"As go these captured pirates of the merchant vessel Novo Laz, so too all space pirates," the Elacino announced.

If there were any shouts, Jack didn't hear them. One of the powered exoskeletons – Jack recognized them as Galactic Policemen – left his post at the edge of the kneeling people and walked behind the nearest in the row. Rifle pointing straight down through the giant Dåi-ori's head, the Policeman pulled the trigger.

Jack didn't hear the thud, just the report as the hairy body fell onto its head, then slid till its chest was flat with the floor. Another report; there fell an East Vidian. Another report; there a Jorg. Another report; there a Brakken.

Finally there remained just the Human, blond haired, translucent pale and red eyed. Jack looked at the man and watched in strange, monstrous attraction as the Policeman moved from behind the prostrate Brakken corpse to the still-kneeling Human man. And just as the Policeman swung the rifle behind the Human's skull, Jack swore he made eye contact with he who was about to die; Jack swore the man furrowed his brow – at Jack and no one else.

And then unmistakably, the man started to stand and shout, "Death to all t—"

But he breathed fire instead of words and smacked the stage floor loud enough to hear the wet sound over the rifle's explosion. The Policeman flipped the Human over with his exoskeleton's magnificent boot and fired three times more, all to the face. Everyone heard the echoing explosions then.

"Tyrants," Karris said, and when Jack looked at him, he saw the smile interrupting the otherwise all-smooth face. "Come on," the Muore said, "Stehl still needs to talk with you."


	6. Chapter 6

By the time he returned to the apartments, it was near pitch dark under the broken lights, and Jack swayed side-to-side in his gait like the most obvious and easy lush a thief could possibly roll.

Maybe that got him home safely, drunk-Jack thought, in invincible confidence. Maybe he looked so obvious all the robbers thought him a too-obvious trap to try take anything from.

"The big one's coming up," Stehl had said. "Oh Jacky-boy, do this thing and you'll never want for anything again in your life, or your kid's. Now do a shot on us, wouldn't you?"

One turned to two, two to five, and five to needing to take off one's shoes and socks to even try to count anymore. It would all be explained again the next day in detail; it would all be accomplished in less than a week after that, but the inhibitions lowered enough that night that Jack felt able to ask the question that had been bothering him so much since the display in the square earlier.

"They stole vitamins," Karris explained of the Novo Laz's would-be space pirates, now head-holed and long since hauled off. "The sun that colony is on, for some reason it makes bodies on the planet too much of one vitamin and not enough of another. The result is some sort of autoimmune disorder."

"That's terrible," Jack said.

Karris laughed. "I suppose. Can't be tossing rocks in glass houses, though, can we?"

"Why? What did we take the last time?"

"A batch of inoculations for some new colonists. They're waiting on an orbital platform somewhere until they can take this and go the rest of the way to the surface."

"So now they're going to have to wait longer?" Jack asked.

"So now the company they paid to settle them is going to poke them with a placebo and ship them down to the planet without it. A lot will die and the company will get to bring in more colonists, and the ones that survive will pass their immunity down to their kids the old fashioned way." Karris laughed again. "And we're supposed to be the bad guys, huh?"

Jack swallowed horror in place of vomit. Or at least he told himself so.

In any case, he couldn't possibly have gotten drunk enough to ask what they were going to steal next.

Sorry, what they were going to redistribute without authorization next. The lingo really did make a difference in how you were able to sleep at night, or at least look at your own face in the mirror. He'd find out later anyhow.

So he got to his building safe, against all odds, and pulled himself up the stairs without puking or dying against all odds, so when the Metsi matron made a comment about his blushing face and slurred speech, he enunciated quite clearly what she could do to herself in light of her widowed state, and then all the Druckers said nothing as he barged his way through their living room.

So he was quite self-satisfied when he opened to door to his own home and found his wife standing to greet him; not even her cross-armed frown could derail his good mood. Dressed in one of his old stretched-out shirts as she was, he could see completely that she was chubby; her belly had swelled up thick like a striped melon, but she was still gorgeous and the swell of life growing in her made him so horny he nearly wanted to cry.

"I love you," Jack said, shutting the door behind him with far more force than was required and locking it behind him.

"You're drunk," Angela said.

"I'm never so drunk to not think constantly of how much I adore you and our child in and the future we'll have together." The words slipped off of his tongue freely and into one another, but he meant all of them.

"You're drunk enough to stink of liquor."

Jack smiled, genuinely pleased to have actually handled so much alcohol, to have kept up with the rest of the pirates. A pirate pilot couldn't be embarrassing himself as lightweight, after all.

"I love you," he said. "Let's go to bed. I love you."

"I'm tired," Angela said. "And you have work in the morning."

"I know. So that's why we ought to go to bed," Jack said.

For a moment perhaps he honestly had wanted to go to sleep. In the morning he wouldn't at all remember that moment.

As his groin pressed up against her warm back, he grew hard, and his hands went to her legs then to her panties to pull them down to her knees, ignoring mild protestations. One hand kept going up to her pleasantly enlarged and braless breasts while the other spread her thighs apart enough to let him pull his pants down and push against her from behind.

He chose not to hear the, "Not right nows," and instead whisper all of the nicest things he could think about his wife in the sincerest words coming so immediately to his brain. Whatever it started as, his nibbles and his fingertips led to an invitingly wet destination, and he slid his engorged and firmest flexible appendance into the soon-to-be exit ramp of his child with little friction and great comfort. Jack felt himself at that magical point of inebriation where his most sensitive synecdoche was sufficiently desensitized not to peak but not quite so much to fall asleep again, and soon Angela's moans rose to a muffled crescendo against the pillow.

As it happened, he didn't spend himself, in fact strangely had no desire to, but climbed down from being behind her blonde head to between her dark hairiness and whispered again with great inflection all of the poetry he imagined a man might vow his child's mother.

"Jack, you really don't have to—" Angela began, but where before the moans had been intended to conclude everything more punctually, now they seemed real and actually breathtaking. The first verse of the arched-back song of joy came, fleshy thighs squeezing his ears till he heard nothing but his own blood in them, then a lulling, panting chorus as they relaxed. But Jack continued, wanting, receiving a second verse, then a third then a fourth.

As he tried for a fifth time, Angela – now somehow completely nude and drenched in sweat - grabbed hold of his hair and pulled him up to her shoulder. Jack allowed himself to be with her, but continued to kiss her neck and send his hands tracing over her, especially marvelous, seed-fertile stomach. The night was important, and he knew why, but couldn't tell her.

"I love you," he said for the hundredth time, audible and inaudible. Then louder, "I have a flight coming up the day after next and I'll be gone a little while." Angela didn't respond. His doubt did, and he answered it. "It's going to be worth a lot of money, you know."

Angela held his own sweaty neck-nape and stroked his scalp but said nothing for the longest time.

"I know they fired you from your job," she whispered, finally. Jack didn't say anything, but didn't bother to deny it either. "I called a few weeks ago, asking about you," she went on," and the person who answered said you hadn't worked for Mr. Wallace in months."

The bedroom suddenly seemed quite dark and despite the din outside, Jack heard his own breath and hers as though they were police sirens.

"Yes," he said, throat dry as tenth generation recirculated air.

"I didn't say anything then. I don't know why." Angela waited for him to speak, but he didn't. "The money kept coming in. We had what we needed for our child; I had what I needed to make the baby well. But I can't stop thinking about where the money is coming from."

Jack pulled himself up and looked down into her face, finding her eyes searching his.

"Do you really want to know?" he said.

She didn't say anything but her chin ducked toward her chest ever so slightly.

So he told her everything, or at least as much everything as anyone could be expected to tell. At some point in the telling, he fell asleep and didn't feel any tears on his arm while he slept.

In the morning he showered and kissed her and was too embarrassed and guilty about what had happened the night before to acknowledge it even in apology. Neither did Angela. But as his hand went to the door to open it, behind him she said, "You're a pirate."

She covered her mouth for a moment, but then took it away. "I love you, Jack. But I can't promise to be here when you get back."

Jack didn't turn around. He wasn't even sure he said it loud enough for her to hear him before he opened the door and shut it again after him.

"I can't promise to come back."


	7. Chapter 7

**Interstellar jumpspace  
****Eighteen days later**

A pilot's job on a ship wasn't limited to steering. The automatic intelligence could handle that most of the time, and when jumping in-and-out of real space, it was unwise to fiddle with anything unless absolutely necessary, anyway.

So Jack spent most of his in-flight time on maintenance of the ship, fixing what had broken down and preventing other breakdowns from occurring. Barring catastrophic system failure, this unending battle could be successfully waged by one man supported by a bevy of skittering custodial bots.

Stehl's ship, a modified medical-waste junker, was large but lean, stripped of all but the most meager luxuries. Naked metal and exposed wires lay in every room and corridor, and the custodial help was limited to just three functioning tool bots and one that couldn't walk down a hall without bumping one of its eight legs into something. The rest of the crew was only partially qualified and interacted with Jack directly just when he had something that needed more warm bodies. But he had himself for company, and he was as happy as ever he'd been, knowing he shouldn't be.

It was hard work, sometimes it seemed like pointless work, but it felt good to have something to do and occupy his time with, especially something so familiar. He loved to be a pilot and know he was needed somewhere. That was the terrible thing.

No, he reminded himself, the terrible thing was what would probably happen to the merchant ship they found when they got there, or more accurately it's merchandise: refugees.

But they weren't _really_ refugees, Stehl had explained.

"These are the survivors of the raid on Kalon Zuj 2V," Stehl said, briefing the small original group, including Jack, of what they were going to do. "And they're survivors because they were the only ones _rich_ enough to be considered _important_ enough to be notified a Zebesian attack was coming."

They didn't have much time, Stehl admitted, but it was enough to export all of their Yire onto a handful of Fisks and stash it on them when they made it to the ship to go off-world. The combined wealth of about 300 of the filthy richest of the rich, all liquid and untraceable, was on that one ship.

Their small, six-person pirate crew would be joined by a dozen other pirates picked up from platforms along the way to join in the raid. These unregistered passengers were largely mercenaries paid not to ask questions, but Stehl liked his inner circle to be true believers and Jack realized the speech he'd heard on the inoculation job was part of the routine.

"They get to start new lives," Stehl said, in his most religious tenor. "The bastards. The other 99 percent of the colony was dead before they knew it, but these think they made it safe. And they think they deserve to be happy and rich because of it. They don't even deserve to live."

The operation could still be bloodless, Karris added, but this would probably be more difficult than the last job. The Zebesian raid was well-known, along with the refugee ship's escape, although Karris made clear few people had learned how much wealth the ship's passengers represented.

Beliel said that after leaving the colony, the refugee ship had picked up another smaller craft and then gone into jumpspace with it. It didn't appear to be standard Federation military, but it was armed and possibly had a Galactic Policeman functioning as an escort. That meant someone was probably going to have to die, but if they were lucky, they could blow up the Policeman's ship with him on it then take the rest of the passengers as usual. Failing that, they'd need to take hostages to hold him off or convince him to go to his ship where they could then blow him up. Failing that, they would have to try to overpower him and kill him directly. Passenger deaths were to be avoided if at all possible, but any collateral damage would be blamed on them in the media, anyway, so taking out the Policeman was to be first priority.

"If lucky, very very lucky we are, no Policeman at all will there be, and armed ship someone else will have," Beliel concluded.

All of this was important to Jack in terms of what he was supposed to do with their own ship while the raid went on, how close to get and when he should expect to leave the mercenaries behind.

And he was told all of it, naturally, after already disembarking Mitsumi. Now he would either be killed for not playing along, or if things went awry and they were caught, be executed by a Policeman. Still, the pirate leader was more polite than ever, perhaps realizing the underlying threat of Jack's situation never left his mind and he had no better alternatives.

"Everything still proceeding smoothly?" Stehl asked Jack, joining him in the cockpit one day after they'd picked up their extra passengers.

"Yes. The ventilation regulator is still making things too hot in some areas, but I think it's the Malakian we brought on. I'll need to have a talk with him about it," Jack said.

"_I'll_ have a talk with him," the Zephan said. "If he thinks it's too cold, he should put on another coat."

"Otherwise yes, we're good. I'll know more exactly by our next duck out of jumpspace, but we're about five days out from overtaking the refugees," Jack said.

"How do you feel about that?"

"Good," Jack answered.

"Good," Stehl said. "How do you really feel about it?"

"Like I'm about to be a very rich man. The kind who never has to worry about feeding his family again. And that feels really good."

"I noticed you didn't say anything when you found out who we'd be raiding," Stehl said. "You seemed surprised."

Jack didn't say anything this time either.

"Did you know," Stehl said, coming to sit next to Jack in the co-pilot's seat, "the law regarding 'unauthorized distribution.' Had you heard where it came from?"

"Something to do with disrupting trade routes to vulnerable colonies?" Jack said, immediately regretting his answer.

"What became Galactic Federation Penal Code Section Forty-Six-Point-Oh-Eight was originally listed under the government code and had to do with the fiefdoms themselves, the platforms and the terrestrial colonies. You're actually right," the Zephan admitted, "but in the early days, no one could track ships very well and you couldn't do what we're doing now. For the same reason, they often went lost. Probably some still traveling through jumpspace now, to come out a few hundred or million years later."

Jack did know that, and in his more pensive moments traveling through jumpspace had tried to calculate the odds of entangling his own ship's particles with any of those ghost ships.

"The law as written," Stehl said, "was meant to hold government accountable for taking cargo intended for a rival colony, seizing it to sell to their own possessions. The Galactic Federation created the police to deal with errant nobles. It was an internal, police matter, see?"

"I never would have guessed," Jack said after he saw Stehl was looking for a response.

"Most wouldn't. It's been a very long time since any fiefdom has had its nobles publicly executed, at least in this area," Stehl said. "The GalFeds did a good job scaring them off, for the most part. Outsourcing it to raiders like us when they do. Better for everyone that way. Less likely to be Human, reinforces stereotypes, that sort of thing."

"Are you saying we work for Mitsumi?" Jack said, shocked.

"No. Although those people you and Karris saw get shot may have been. Or one of their competitors. Who knows? It's happened before," Stehl said, "No, we do strictly anti-arbitrage work. The poorest fiefs are the least likely to care where something below market value came from, so long as you can make it look plausibly legitimate and cover their ass."

"Oh," Jack said.

"You know why they call Zebesians 'Space Pirates,' don't you?" Stehl said. Jack shook his head. "It's so they can sic the Galactic Policemen on them without declaring war. Remember, the Federation has been at peace for going on 500 years, even though they kill-on-sight an entire race that invades planets. Even though that race controls a large portion of what's considered Galactic Federation territory. Even though both use orbital bombardment.

"The mercantile clause, it's been the source of everything, keeping an interstellar war undeclared, funneling funding to suppress dissent, all of it," Stehl said. "Does it bother you, what we're doing?"

"It frightens me. If we get caught, I mean," Jack said before quickly adding, "but I trust you. I wouldn't be part of this if I didn't."

"What do you think you'll do if everything doesn't go immaculate? What if we have to kill some of the passengers this time?"

"I guess I'll imagine they're all Mr. Wallace – my old boss," Jack said. "And then I'll sleep well because I know they deserve worse."

"Maybe one day after we get back, someone'll have to take care of old Mr. Wallace," Stehl said. "Wouldn't you?"

Then he left. That was five days ago and the refugee ship was materializing into real space in front of Jack now.


	8. Chapter 8

Jack took back over manual controls of his ship and its negligible genuine gravity to slide up closer to the targeted ship mired in real space, recharging to go into another jump.

Waiting relatively nearby in real space and lacking an artificial gravity generator, it hadn't been noticed or at least its motives hadn't been suspected, and that was a good thing. Giving two quick raps and a third delayed knock on a hollow metal bar running back deep into the ship, Jack informed Stehl of the relative rosiness of the situation as he continued to guide his vessel to the point of attack. It was different from docking a ship in, well, a _number_ of significant ways, but Jack tried to pretend he was merely pulling into Mitsumi again for the thousandth time.

As he tried to believe this fantasy, he opened the main bay to release the pirate's fleet of attack drones, 50 housecat sized machines each running on some of the most common and cheapest quantum computing states. The refugees were on a mid-level merchant ship which meant it didn't have any ballistic or energy based defenses, and instead relied on generating an alternating logic field to fry the AI's of incoming drones. If the pirates were attacking with military-level hardware, those drones would be able to operate even if caught in a given paradoxical logic field. And if it were a military ship they were attacking, there would be ballistic defenses and interrupter gear to shoot down the drones as they switched from one state to another.

But it wasn't a military encounter, and while most of the drones drifted off into the great vast nothing, unable to comprehend how 2+2=5 but sometimes also -3, a few were able to identify and damage the merchant ship's Odessa engine, and three more heavily-armed and manually-piloted fighters finished the job, ensuring the pirates could do their work without fear of getting taken along on a hasty escape into jumpspace if the central engine should be able to recharge quickly enough. The fighters continued to pass over the merchant ship, blowing more holes into the hull. None of it made any noise, but Jack watched a bipedal species he'd never seen before get sucked out into space along with some canisters of cargo, the creature miming some sort of scream in Jack's direction. He would have looked away if he hadn't had to steer right toward it. As it was, he remembered the refugee colonists were supposed to be largely Human and realized the thing suffocating in vacuum must have been one of the crew, caught in the wrong place and time.

Several thrusters had been knocked out by the time Jack pulled his vessel within the maximum distance for embarking, but the other ship was still trudging along slowly, bleeding debris as systems inside worked to seal off the hull breaches. There were too many breaches to close, and it couldn't pull itself away fast enough. Jack stuck close easily and as the last thruster got knocked out, the pirates still onboard left their inside posts to make the leap outside.

Jack could see all twelve fire their Gunig tubing and he saw he'd judged the distance right. None of the thin, white streams fell short of its target and the raiders had a temporary bridge to hold their target where it was supposed to be relative to the medical-waste junker turned pirate frigate. With the help of the tubing's slight anchoring, Jack kept their own ship where it was supposed to be, his mind immune to the defensive logic field but fighting off other distractions.

Each pirate pulled himself across the gap easily, reaching the opposite ship at about the same time. They'd aimed for different hull breaches and now forced their ways inside, temporarily disrupting the emergency atmosphere shields long enough to get through. They were all outfitted in custom exoskeletons and spacesuits, similar to bounty hunters. Some of them probably moonlighted as bounty hunters, or were just moonlighting as pirates now.

"Beliel, all inside immaculate is?" Jack heard Stehl ask, notifying everyone it was now OK to use the shortwave radios to communicate. Switching after every fifth of a second, they'd been synced by algorithm ahead of time and would be uncrackable during the brief raid by all but the top private and Federation anti-cryptography programs.

"Yes, good. No trouble giving, the passengers," the West Vidian reported. He went on to clarify one person had been shot – another crewmember – and pirates were holding onto one of the children while they searched the other refugees for Fisks, but that had put all the rest in line.

"Karris, are things immaculate around us?" Stehl said.

"Downright vestal," the Muore replied from his small attack craft, still leashed to the junker as a precaution. "The Policeman's craft is all exploded. No sign of him in the debris, though."

"Everyone hear that? Stay frosty in there," Stehl admonished. Counting him and Jack, there were only three people still on their junker and Stehl left Drake the Malakian watching the junker's side of the Gunig connections while the Zephan headed up toward Jack to get a better view of how the raid was unfolding. Glancing back, Jack's eye traced the length of the pulse rifle Zephan carried.

"Are everyone's radio transmissions letting you keep track of where they are?" Stehl said.

"I think so," Jack said.

"You think so or they are?"

"I think I can see everyone, but there's a weird radio disturbance on the third level, near the food stores," Jack said. "I can account for everyone, but this thirteenth one is hitting a lot of the radio wavelengths, oscillating."

Jack couldn't have timed his explanation better or more poorly.

"Pirates: cease and desist your attack on this vessel if you wish to live," a voice came, flat and mechanical but patching its way into their radios and following each algorithmic shift without delay. "If you return and flee, you will be pursued, but not by me and may yet survive this."

"Fuck," Stehl said, to no one. "_Fuck_." Jack saw Stehl switch to one of the few personal channels, utilizing a different algorithm. "Beliel, as soon as you get 50 million Yire, I need to talk to you in person. Understood?"

"No," Beliel said. "But as you say, I do."

"You have a Policeman on ship at or in the 3D printer lab," Stehl said, again over the primary shortwave to the raiding pirate. "Communication is to be done in person. Stop radio contact and identification." Within a few seconds, Jack's sensors stopped picking up where the pirates were on the refugee ship. The Zephan turned two cold eyes on his pilot. "If I tell you to go, you go into jumpspace and don't ask any questions."

Like Beliel, Jack knew when to nod his head even when he didn't understand. Stehl took that as enough and went deeper into the ship, to watch over the ingresses to the junker in case the Policeman tried to come in.

The raiding pirates had been warned there might be a Policeman on board, and they were coached about what to do, but if the Policeman had found a way to keep track of their positions, there was no way to hear back from them without them revealing themselves, a horrible disadvantage to be in.

If the Policeman had been accounted for, Jack could have watched the visuals from each Pirate on the refugee ship. Now he couldn't even receive any audio transmissions. Despite numerous monitors displaying the junker's interior and exterior, he kept his eyes trained primitively through the front navigation glass, looking for what he didn't know, and kept his ears peeled for any shouts from Stehl to leave everything behind and take them running for greener pastures.

Five minutes ticked by. Ten minutes ticked by. No one had crossed the tubing in either direction and the three pirate fighters were starting to run low on fuel, and more importantly, risk their tethers. Stehl hadn't said anything, but already Jack was considering going to jumpspace, dumping the junker somewhere and making his way back to Mitsumi someway, somehow. Or maybe making his way somewhere else. There was no guarantee Angela would be there, after all, and no reason to think he'd be anything more than baggage for her. But then Jack couldn't lock the cockpit door himself, and getting away from a Policeman to be stuck with a pirate carrying a pulse rifle wasn't much of an improvement.

An explosion suddenly expanded out through the atmospheric bubbles of one of the breaches on the third level, fluid and weightless and ejecting with it what looked to be everything from a fire extinguisher and food printer to part of someone's torso. A matching lower body followed and then two more whole pirates in exoskeletons still struggling.

In his powered exoskeleton, the West Vidian was pulling himself with one hand along the Gunig tubing, toward the junker, and with the other his small ballistic rifle fired back toward the breach behind him. Jack thought he saw a figure standing in the middle of the weightless fire, and it cast a blue tendril toward Beliel, wrapping around his leg and yanking him back toward the merchant ship. Just then one of the pirate attack craft managed to come around at the right angle and fired at the breach, widening it. The towering figure was sucked out into space along with the flames and the beam that had wrapped around Beliel came loose. The West Vidian careened back toward the merchant ship that was still producing an artificial gravity, and caught himself before bouncing off.

Feeling somewhat saddened for the brave Policeman despite himself, Jack nonetheless allowed himself to exhale. He knocked on the metal bar calling Stehl up the cockpit to check on what the procedure was now that the threat was gone, including whether general radio communication could resume. He got a return knock acknowledging him but Stehl stayed in the back.

"Bey, how close are you?" Stehl asked on Beliel's channel.

"Close. Perhaps two minutes or more. Like broken, feels my leg," Beliel answered.

"We'll clean you up in a moment. Just get here. Everyone else?" Stehl asked, finally using the general algorithm again.

A smattering of, "All rights," returned, except from the pilots. The reason why soon became clear.

"Pilot, cut my anchor. He's on my—oh shit," Jack heard Karris say, using the common algorithm. Jack looked at his main monitor and saw the glow of two explosions flowering in symmetry within view. Jack looked at the various periphery views and couldn't find two of the fighters, then saw a red-and-gold powered exoskeleton standing on Karris' fighter, using a cannon on one arm to fire small energy pulses into the small craft's forward jet. His other hand looked wrapped around the fighter's flexible magnetic tether.

Stehl quickly radioed as well. "Do it. Cut all of their leashes. He blew up the other two and he's trying to get onto our ship by pulling himself down Kay's tether."

Immediately Jack did as told and watched as the thin magnetic connection lost all tension. Karris' ship, along with the remains of the other two, began to drift away, toward nothing at all. On Karris' channel, Stehl sent a brief message. "Kay, we'll pick you up in a moment." Then just to Jack. "Can you actually do that?"

"Maybe. I mean, without artificial gravity, I don't see how…" Jack tried to think. "Does he have any sort of propulsion to get him toward us if we get close? Has he had enough practice to manage that without AI guidance?"

Stehl didn't say anything and Jack received no answer, at least from Stehl.

"Run, captain," the mechanical voice came again, having apparently heard enough of the pilot channel to figure out that algorithm as well. "No one else is getting back to your ship. When I make it on yours myself, no one will get off that, either. Take it now and go."

On one of the display monitors intended to track the ships, Jack could see the red Policeman had left the all but doomed fighter and was pushing himself back toward the large merchant ship with a series of short boosts from a propulsion system on his back. Jack couldn't see where Karris was. The standard color for a Galactic Policeman was blue. Jack found himself trying to think if he'd ever seen one ranked high enough to be painted red and gold.

Jack heard footsteps pounding toward the door and when he turned around, he saw the end of a rifle, then felt it press hard into his forehead.

"If you leave now, I swear to the Master I will blow your greasy white Human face all over your controls and pilot this thing myself," Stehl said, not loud or even angry, but convincingly. "Beliel is going to get onboard, we're going to get everyone still alive and holding Yire back onboard, and then you're going to figure out a way to save Karris from the Drift. That's what's going to happen. Repeat again with me, Jacky Boy."

"That's what's going to happen," Jack and the Zephan said in unison. Then just Stehl. "Good." He removed the rifle, but Jack could still feel a round indentation in his forehead as Stehl began to radio again. "Everyone, everyone, back quick as you can. What you haven't got, you're not going to. It's time to go."

Stehl bent down until his face was level with Jack's.

"I'm going in the back, and if you hear me knock on the pipe, you go. If I don't knock, you don't. Yes?" Stehl said.

Jack nodded. Stehl began to jog away then turned and shouted one more thing at Jack.

"And if Karris calls, you talk to him and let him know we haven't forgotten him. But don't say his name over the radio."

Jack rubbed his face as Stehl disappeared into the junker's belly. The monitor focused on the Gunig tubing showed Beliel was about to reach the junker, but no one else was anywhere close on their lines. The intermittent general radio broadcasts had identified seven pirates still broadcasting, but he only saw three in addition to the West Vidian now, creeping along the white tubing. Then Policeman came into view again, sticking his blue tether on part of the merchant ship beyond its horizon and presumably pulling himself to a landing. A moment later he appeared atop the crest, running toward them.

It had been a very, very long time, Jack's absent mind thought, since he'd been able to make a decision without thinking it would lead to his death somehow. It was amazing and seemed so long ago that he'd thought getting fired was a death sentence. He'd thought he was going to die getting mugged. He'd thought he'd starve to death. Then, in the back of his mind, every dealing he'd had with pirates meant he was going to be killed if he did or didn't a certain thing.

Now the Policeman. And now he'd run out of choices that didn't result in him being shot or blown up or otherwise executed, privately or publicly. He'd never know what it meant to be a father, never know whether he was going to have a son or daughter. He and Angela had waited, old-fashioned surprise and lack of finances, primarily. Even if he got out of this situation alive, how did he know he'd get back home safely, and if safely, paid? How could he live with himself? How many of the refugees had died in the raid? How many of the crew?

An monitor displaying the junker's interior showed Beliel had gotten inside safely and was strapped in to one of the chairs. Stehl had removed the lower part of the suit for Beliel's right leg, and it was already heavily bruised and swelling. Jack checked the monitor of the exterior showing the red and gold Policeman had picked off all three of the Pirates, and despite Stehl or the Malakian putting a chemical knife to junker's side of the Gunig tubing, separating it, the Policeman still advanced. He advanced, and when he arrived, he'd kill them all.

Jack strapped himself in to his seat. He pushed the throttle and the junker began to pull away from the scene. As expected, everyone felt the acceleration.

"You should not think you can outrun me," the Policeman said on the pilot channel. "You had better go into jumpspace _before_ I land."

"What did I tell you, you miserable Human shit?" Stehl screamed on the pilot channel.

Jack sighed.

"Fuck off," Jack Gwinn said, on the general channel.

He opened the hangar doors to the medical waste junker and clicked off the atmospheric shield. A half minute passed, air ripping around Jack the whole while, but he kept his hand on the necessary controls. Jack checked the interior cameras and saw no one left inside but Beliel, still strapped down. A cord of blood expanding into a cloud of droplets ran out of the wound in his leg. His limbs continued to move with the violent rush of air into vacuum but Jack couldn't see any intelligence guiding them. He waited another five seconds then turned the atmosphere on again and closed the hangar doors. Indeed, Beliel slumped into the limpness of zero gravity and Jack searched the external monitors for a sign of Stehl. He didn't see the Zephan, or the Malakian for that matter, but began to charge the ship up for its trip to jumpspace. It had been less than 15 minutes since the refugee ship had phased into real space. That was how long the whole thing was supposed to take, anyway.

Jack unbuckled and went back to check on Beliel, taking a wrench out of one of the maintenance boxes on his way. By the time he got back to the main hangar, he saw Beliel was still in his seat, saying nothing, and he found Stehl as well, stuck through the middle by the long round pipe, which had wedged itself enough not to get pulled outside. Jack knocked on the end of the pipe, but it didn't echo. He went over to Beliel and opened the Vidian's horned helmet, keeping the wrench ready. But there was no sign of life in the face and Jack resisted the urge to smile. He searched the suit's pockets and on the front left breast, there was a pile of Fisks. Jack reached in and pulled out the card, reading off the digital display.

Thirty thousand.

Five million.

Twenty million.

He added them all together. The sum was just over 65 million. Bless the Goddesses, three and holy.

Jack turned and started back for the cockpit. The junker should be ready to make jumpspace soon. He could make it to a liberty platform, dump the ship and go homey home, to take care of Angela Gwinn and their child for all the rest of their lives, live peacefully and let Angela write to her heart's content, to become famous prosperous and recognized in her greatness. And he, in risking his life for so long, would be able to feel secure in masculine contribution to the peaceful domestic existence all enjoyed.

Sitting back down in his seat, Jack heard a voice on the radio and recognized it as Karris.

"What have you done, Jack?" the Muore asked, somehow not accusingly. But the signal was weak.

Jack didn't reply and then turned off the radio entirely.

It was quiet until a little while later, Jack heard a clanging of metal behind him and reached for his wrench. Turning around, he saw a red and gold powered exoskeleton blocking the doorway to the cockpit. Looking close, Jack saw it wasn't a standard Policeman's uniform at all, but something different, and the suit held a limp figure in his hand, the Malakian wrapped up in a double coat. And Jack did his best in the moment to explain himself in the past few months, and exist a little longer.

"You don't understand. I have a wife, I have a baby on the way," Jack said, dropping the wrench and backing up to find himself against the control panel. "I'm about to be a father. I have enough now. Please."

"Silence," the figure said, pitiless, taciturn and voiceless in a red-and-gold powered suit. The arm cannon began to glow and it trained on Jack's chest.

"Pirate scum."

* * *

I tell you, dear readers, this tale began inside a whore, and indeed that's where it ends. Copulation bookends as good as any one might conceit in satisfaction. I spent a night on a space platform as common as any other, meeting a woman as apparently common as any other, but once pushing inside her and sharing her bed till morning, I found she spilt out an extraordinary tale perhaps like any other, but if so, more extraordinary for it.

She had pains, you see, and I had found her through the not quite legal listings on one of her good days, and enjoyed the climax of myself in her not nearly so much as the conversation after, not so much as the brush of her fingers, pushing hair off around my ear after, and we talked, and talked, and talked, of what was, had been and might be in all equanimity.

Her once-husband had left and never returned and she told me a tale she thought might have occurred because she never heard for sure of anything, really. It was a very good tale, but he was just as likely to have been successful and taken his riches to territories new, for no reason other than the newness of things and love of it. I told her so.

Oh! But what a romantic whore she was, and I noticed why when her son came rushing into the room, causing her to scramble to him and take him outside again. Love, love, genesis and love again.

We live in the grandest of all times, in the most hopeful of all times, and every place is full of infamy and depravity, debauchery and blasphemy, but oh, what fathers might do for their wives and children. Oh! How terrible we wish things weren't.

She might sell her tale to someone yet, but I think I'll sell it first.


End file.
